autobiography
Americannoun
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of autobiography
Explanation
You are writing an autobiography when you write your own life story. A writer who writes an autobiography is like a painter who paints a self-portrait. If you intend to write your autobiography one day, it might be a good idea to start recording notes about your life in a diary. The author Gertrude Stein was being clever when she poked fun at the very idea of autobiography when she wrote her own memoirs but titled them The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, instead of The Autobiography of Gertrude Stein.
Vocabulary lists containing autobiography
Words to Live By: Bio
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Write On!: Graph and Gram
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To Thine Own Self Be True: Auto
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Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
In his 2012 autobiography "An American Son," the man oft-memed as the "viceroy" of Cuba, recounts boasting to his exiled Cuban grandfather that he would one day overthrow Fidel Castro and free Cuba.
From Barron's ● Jul. 29, 2026
Famous Boston fund manager Jeremy Grantham recalled in his autobiography one of his first forays into stock picking as a young man.
From MarketWatch ● Jul. 15, 2026
Widdecombe continued writing, publishing four fiction novels and an autobiography, and made many broadcast appearances, including as a guest host of news quiz Have I Got News for You.
From BBC ● Jul. 10, 2026
Moviegoers should be careful not to read too much autobiography into an actor’s creative choices, but Jolie makes such speculation tantalizing, adding additional layers of drama to her films.
From Los Angeles Times ● Jun. 26, 2026
As you read my father’s autobiography, whether for the first time or after a long absence, it is my hope that you will come to know him foremost as a man.
From "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" by Alex Malcolm X;Hailey
What if autobiographies or books about history are more your thing?
From BBC ● Jul. 31, 2026
The book’s leading actors have been subjects of biographies and autobiographies, and most events have been exhaustively covered in scholarly and popular histories and articles as well as media reports.
From The Wall Street Journal ● Dec. 16, 2025
“The projections mirror and amplify that as part of the visual vocabulary, whether that’s Douglass’ newspaper articles or autobiographies, or the text of the Emancipation Proclamation.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Feb. 16, 2025
Chapter 9 is about Frederick Douglass and identity-aware liberalism, as expressed through his autobiographies.
From Salon ● Nov. 10, 2024
It is not enough to say that my mother and father do not want to write their autobiographies.
From "Hunger of Memory" by Richard Rodriguez
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
